Training Log Archive: bl

DP short & sweet - bright blue, crisp, breezy. Mocha's pet therapy day & needed to get back for a bath...rid her of favorite scents.

Made a discovery yesterday - the episodic right groin aching/burning periodically experienced appears to have declared itself as an inguinal hernia. I wondered if it might not somehow be related to the hamstring issue. Yesterday was uncomfortable enough to pay attention: localized tenderness, a small swelling and enough discomfort to be distracting. This occurred while mapping so lay down on ground, put feet up on a tree trunk & it quickly disappeared - and did not reappear over the next 75' of walking. Another thing to contend with in the near future.

Evening DP w/ Beth as well. Pathetic amount of calorie burning on my part. Miss real, carefree running. More dry needling about which I'm developing a complex, eg, damn uncomfortable and so far w/o discernible result.

July 4th around here. Maybe 2 good days of field work @BB. Spent a reasonable (maybe unreasonable seeing as it was at work) amount of time pondering a portion of base map today. It's satisfying to be able to see much of .33 km sq in one's mind.

DP, cool and just right length for Z&M. No Tiffany's crowd for some reason this year. So little mileage!!

Map walk with field checking at Bear Brook. Drove well into the forest - had not been in that part for quite some time - used to run a 6 mi loop on the same road. Not too hot or too buggy. Always a slow process getting things right. Takes more than one look-see for me. First pass get-acquainted, second mostly right, third better be right or right as can be.

Walked up to a streamer wondering if it served an O purpose but saw that it was occupied for another purpose.

Meetings & acupuncture whiled away the time. At acp, a different lady was talking about her husband just finishing first year FP residency at CH (bl was first resident there, '95). She was saying she hoped the next 2 years would afford more time. I made some comment about Concord being a pleasant community in which to work (a lot less stress than, say, NYC) and that I had chosen Newton-Wellesley Hospital for similar reasons in '77. She informed me that that was her husband's previous place of work as an ICU nurse. I was then telling her that I had an old RN girlfriend from there who became an acupuncturist among other things. Lots of needles was the reward, apparently.

Faraway series, photos from elsewhere, #70
Cape Horn astern (voyage of ANNA CHRISTINE, Bergen, February, '82)

C • That old Norwegian flag loo... 3

DP, happy dogs after 3 nights in kennel. Hot & loads of FDFs. Deer remains completely gone - a few hairs & 2 plastic bags.

PT with more dry needling - 3 times right butt, give it a 5/10 for a few moments each time. A distraction on the jog.

Dix I walk, brief after weeding wacking Lyman's place - mini-exercise. Dix
offers a few variations on running the perimeter with excellent views. Miss
not being able to do for time being. Raw by the water, walk was mostly away from wind and in part in woods. Next time I return to Dix, I'll have been to Sweden & Scotland with the insight re the physical status quo that that will produce. A weekend of fog for the most part. Visible shoreline occasionally reduced to mere imagination. Navigation, however, still remains generally trivial with boat icon showing current position on chart and radar's magenta display showing invisible shore and objects (buoys, other boats etc). Technology enables one to venture out but the senses (6th as well) atrophy.

A ship's prow in passing


Chart plotter/radar navigation


First rays

DP, raining hard as we set out, quickly stopped, ended up drizzle. Always nice to get out & 'test the water' before diving back inside - as into the work space. Bow Town truck was only a few seconds behind, parked w/in 25 yds. Thought I might be getting a chat about "no unauthorized vehicles beyond sign" but it's Friday and that wasn't the case.

Pincushion Days

about describe the past two. Needles here and there, seemingly everywhere. One in a Western vein, the others in an Eastern vein. Make a noticeable difference? Not yet.

Canned the drive-to-Maine-this-eve slip of sanity. Had my reasons for driving on a crappy Friday night to either row out in the dark to a boat likely rocking in wind & rain or, assuming sanity prevailed, sleep in the back of the station wagon. Fun denied.

TGIF: "Who said anything about fun?" (Z, 9/04)

First visit to TI in quite some time - boat prep & just plain "sunness" contrived to keep me away. 100 situps for "belly penance" due to ice cream etc consumption w/o burning off calories sufficiently. Weather-wise, a wet period with fairly hard rain and dark early.

PT visit, liked the fellow. Brought a tee shirt & shorts which were needed. Turns out, coincidentally, the selected tee shirt says "Deer Park" 1981 (with maybe another word or two) which I associate with Peekskill, ie, Blue Mountain (not sure why it doesn't say that) which is ironic because it was at this same place that I pulled the muscle making for this very office visit 30 years later. He tried dry needling which involved a nearly 3", fine gauge needle into the piriformis twice. Interesting that such a needle could go directly in with only minor discomfort.

C • Needling 2

First go at acupuncture. Had no idea what to expect. Was easy enough...needles here and there. Relaxing enough that I just about fell asleep around 1210...some Native American music interspersed with birdsong. Back Friday, PT tomorrow.

Got the scanner functioning again with new Vuescan. That along with the OCAD 10 on XP on a MAC was an unprecedented software success - failure usually wins.

DP, longer than bargained on. Bit of (hot) sun, mostly cloudy. DF's dominated, dogs had more than enough.

SPS wander, mix jog & walk. Chickens were curious to see me.

DP, fine early evening, in fact the first hour of summer if I recall from what Beth said. Fair weather sky, calm, a bit hot. Passed a painted turtle, told Z to leave it alone. Got back to car, sat on back fender for a few minutes. Then "time to go, Zoe" - she picked up the turtle I'd failed to see, expecting to bring it along like a favorite bone. She removed it from its mission maybe 300m.

An acupuncture appointment tomorrow, PT Thursday. Have OCAD 10 on the Mac which is indeed a nice feeling - now linked up to the web and consolidation as well.

C • Summer solstice 2

At SPS on grass & then on warm aluminum bleachers.

To & from SPS fields, daisies mostly, buttercups as well. Something lavender also.

DP straight out back to contours & and along and back. Over a knoll where an A meet control from '07 was placed. The last 150m of the approach then was reasonably open. Now it is a wall of white pine laced with downed branches/fallen trees, a veritable hell-hole capable of extracting the most vehement cursing.... That must be due to interfering with slow forest succession and all the resultant, exuberant growth. Crossed 200m of ferns and marshy stuff - that was different and then more ferns on dry ground. Z was beat (10 yrs old this Oct.)

Faraway series, photos from elsewhere # 69

Mt. Baker sunrise, North Cascades, Washington, July, 1980

Map walk with minimal field checking. Walked a 4.8k (FR 305 distance) green provisional course for October. Challenging terrain, gobs of green cutting visibility, excellent contours, surprisingly little rock except in a few areas.

Good to get a feel for course flow - consider green the 'backbone" course with red/blue longer, brown a bit less, orange a different consideration, W/Y too - last three perhaps 1/75 scale. Got sufficiently confused enroute #8 that I stopped, said to myself "go no further" (amongst green mansions but no "windows"); had most of a sandwich & some grapes. Was thinking a retreat to S or SE to Smith Pond but noted a bold contour not far - went to look - found a prominent 2 contour nose & could readily see where that was. Added an intermediate control, removing what had to be too difficult a leg.

Right leg put up with 5 mi walking. Wrenched a few times tripping or, once, removing a dead tree from a depression - sudden stress is not good!

Best part was being told entrance was free (NH resident over 65). Saw a fawn, nothing else, later people & numerous MTB'ers at end. Two tickling ticks since sitting down for this entry. Not too many mosquitoes.

June gem: emerald day

C • FR 5

DP, my turn & being hounded. No rest for the weary but actually feel pretty good after woods walk. Last night, the submorons (suitably descriptive word borrowed from SF) were shooting, started maybe around 8pm - not constantly but I bet 10' didn't go by w/o a barrage of bullet sounds. At 10:40p, I was po'd enough to drive over there to give 'em what for - and, who knows, have a gun pointed at me as well. The headlights revealed nothing (of course). Turned the engine off, sat there, cooling off. Noted some lightning bugs and frogs croaking in a nearby marsh and that was it. Effective might be to call police at first shot (anything after 7p?) or ride a bike over for look-see, maybe see if they arrived in a motor vehicle & note LP #.

a new devotee of directed stretching

DP, nice day contrary to forecast but a thunder storm brewing in the west.
Beth had mentioned a deer carcass from the am walk - went to take a look.
Didn't know it was deer hunting season.
"Not you, not me"

too many people are absolute idiots - besides killing the animal illegally it was left in plain view and in plastic to boot

C • Outrageous 1

Walk/jog over to CHS track - went round 6 times & back. Mostly for focus and to be out of building. Hamstring is no better - requires time, concentration, dedicated effort for improvement, virtually none of which I have done - too helter-skelter an existence past 2 weeks. Very negative about it. Did speak with Heidi Lyman who suggested acupuncture. She had had a good result on a hamstring problem as well as foot pain from a metatarsal stress fx. Will give it a try - desperation setting in! Have not done U/S either. Would need bonafide PT or buy a one of my own.

Diane & PG entered in the Mt. Washington auto race tomorrow. Weather might make for some stories....

DP with Beth as well. Dogs in kennel past 4 days. They were clean (a parting bath seems to be de rigueur) and eager (to be smelly). Paucity of tracks - some interesting/impressive dirt bike sandscript but no camera. No Tiffany crowd. Spotted numerous turtle eggs that had been dug up and eaten (raccoons?) - such is life.

Speaking of...evening guest

C • I love those guys 2

Boat delivery time, any training schedule turned upside down. Overnight from Rye harbor with fortuitous NNW wind which was fine (it had been from NE). Downright cold on the night watches. Full moon peeking out now and then. Stopped at Dix, saw some sun and blue and lots of gulls and then on to Rockland. Stiff/sore from the inactivity of being aboard a boat - a few miles walking is an entirely different proposition. Came home to empty drive - good when boat departs (more space) and good when she returns (consolidation of life).

Route: close by Seguin, Damariscove, Allen, Burnt & Mosquito.

A neighbor (noted when crying as in "get away from my nest")


Maine granite


Late in the day


Moonlight patterns

C • Approach to Dix 4

Row around a small islet near Dix.

Faraway series, photo from elsewhere, #68

RHODORA then and now

A good wind in Venezuela, 1985


Amongst today's ferns


enough of the buggy drive, to the sea!

C • Dangerous seas 2

AM DP around the block. Overcast, rain stopped.

PM DP with Beth out & back to first marsh below BOg Meadow. Bugs & more bugs. Walking feels about right for the hamstring. Boat work involved awkward positions which occasionally was uncomfortable. One reminder is taking off right shoe with left toe on right heel, a long ache. Maybe when boat is gone, I'll spend some time addressing the problem - have been sporadic.

C • Slow and steady, 3

DP, rain, not much else. Lots of greenery, mosquitoes as well.

Yuk of a day, hard rain for most part, still had to get boat stuff done. Drove to Portsmouth & Kittery, back by 11AM. Every time we tried to return the water tank to its place, another problem arose - 4 by end of day.

Started the wood stove to chase away blah.

Saturday eve symmetry - dark chocolate (& white)

Stretching etc at home on the rug. Boat work rules the day. Running not being a real option is disconcerting, to say the least. In pre-AP days, though, I might not have run for 10 or so days due to end of spring O season and launch deadline. I am not getting anywhere re prep for European O because of injury; I can always find 50' for running somewhere in the day.

Saw a turtle in the brook in front of the house today. I'd guess a snapper, appropriately sinister from what I could see. Went into the garage to wipe paint off the fingers, was back in less than 90" and the bloke was gone! It was as if I imagined this lumbering reptile. Looked a bit but could not spot. Told Beth of the sighting (the only turtle I've seen in that brook in 16 years). She said the fellows that hauled the boat off one or two Junes ago reported seeing a turtle - perhaps the same one. Will keep looking. The rapid disappearance was weird.

Ben E ("CPUDude") came & killed the virus lickety split. He's a PC person who moved with agility/facility on the Mac. The MacAttack withered under his fire. The porn people are gone - they'll be missed:-). I did not expect him to come with the nasty weather (particularly the electric component) and was working on the boat. Beth answered the door in a bathrobe. Heard a voice astern (over the radio and which I thought was on the radio) & voila.

He didn't think the Dell OEM Windows XP I just bought would activate, pulled out a Windows 2000 CD, put it in the laptop for a short while and the system was ready for the XP upgrade which I thought to be of no use. So now Parallels, XP, QR closer, maybe even OCAD. Nothing like expertise and not always easy to find.

10 mi in the past 7 days - sigh. Not much progress.

DP, cool enough, sun behind a patch of cloud. Get most any kind of exercise before 0800 on such days as we walk into summer. Spotted a turtle track as well as the new moon yest. eve.

Used the vibrator/heat pad - a mattress alive....

Anatomy of a leg (11-12 at brown USOC Ultra-Long champs, Hueston Woods, OCIN, 4/2/11). An occasional review of the season's worst.



Approached #11 along the stream bed and greener than mapped perhaps. Certainly green & thorny (and had been much of the time) so my first thought was to get to the road, not even noting the indistinct path I crossed. To the bend and then over to that same path, crossing the reentrant and then angling SW, crossing the second reentrant, onto the same path again - cutting the corner. Along the path but not sure where. Don't recall seeing the RS, angled SW to the PL, in a reentrant I assumed was the reentrant to the north (! fatal). Crossed the open ride, down the reentrant to the stream - along a shelf and up the reentrant I thought would lead me to the control. It looked OK and ahead was a green patch, looking sufficiently green. I circled around that green for quite some time, thinking it may have been well-enough placed, seemingly hidden. Eventually, I took a bigger swing onto the spur where I could see I was almost due E of the front of the Lodge (had been inside earlier). That was sufficient to tell me I was too far south & went north to the point. It seemed like a hard-to-relocate situation or maybe it was just me. Fastest was 6:00, I was 17:52, Sharon C 10:05.

Have a virus on this computer. Opened an email alledgedly from Jeff Shapiro (!) here and at work. At work an IT fellow was able to clean it up. Here, not so easy. At least I know what I am up against. Indeed, it throws porn my way, even when not expecting! Truly vile. I had been warned at work and did not buy anything to remove it when it came with its dire warnings last night. Some of the English is strange after giving it some thought. A fellow was going to come here this pm but did not show up. There might be sufficient info for me to do available on the web it but I wouldn't mind some expertise.

C • Sobering 5

Evening DP on Beth's watch and too beckoning an eve for me to pass up. Started w/ usual pest factor and discussion about bonafide entitlement vs. conditioned expectations. When Z&M note simple breakfast or delayed dinner is finished, expectation does not take 'no' for an answer.

Moon another notch to the left, barely moving but fragrant air (as January cannot know), more crickets and some stories in the sand. The best went unrecorded: a zigzag up a sand slope in the process of being made by a winged insect and ruined by Z.

Vanishing turtle tale/tail


Beth getting over the final few vertical feet of a respectable slope in the Sandbox


Z with her very own turtle (she has a knack for retrieving them)

SPS wander at noon, stay in shade. Can't do much more than 2 mi & not encouraging at that. 90F by mid-pm.

DP with the Monitor, such news! Powder blue, heat in the making. Seems like the dogs are expecting a treat just to get in the car to go! (vs leave). At least, size and duration still escape them.

Expect to see the "Breakfast at Tiffany's " crowd any day. Maybe 100 brass shell casings strewn about from shooters...evidently not worth the trouble to pick up.

Faraway series, photos from elsewhere, #67

Machu Picchu in morning mist, 1986

Evening DP, seductive June evening. So shady at the homestead one might think the day is done. Quite to the contrary, the near-solstice day was alive and well on the PL. Played in the warm sand of the Sandbox.

Otherwise, the day was lost as far as the clarion call of AP "training/improvement" is concerned. Came home at noon & then straight from work to remove the fresh water tank from under the cabin sole. Got it out with only one small, unwelcomed nick - found a 3mm corrosive hole in a repair dating back to c. 1992.

Come to think, water and sand were primary at the end of the day. Mama Earth is always making sand with Her erosive wind and water action. I often wonder when, where and how the Sandbox environs came to be...a river, a seashore, a desert even.

Just felt a tick ticking on my right shoulder. As an experiment (no ready scotch tape or inclination to walk the distance to the toilet), I pressed on it nearly as hard (on the mouse pad) as I could more than once for some 5-6 seconds each time - and it carried on. So I took the poor bloke to the toilet; next step will be their "learning" to swim. Darwin would say: "but of course!".

One step from eternity

C • Fleet of foot 2

DP, back to slough. Almost cold in the house, overdress, get in PL sun & quickly hot. Went looking for a green & wet photo with dogs but didn't persuade them/bark at them enough for it to happen.

Scent of lilac, sight of rhododendron, a cricket song for the going out.

Went to Portsmouth yesterday as well as having Pete & family for lunch, lopping time off from GSD-at home theme.

Couldn't find a tennis ball at home or anything suitable in size at first sweep. Google provided the exercise, even a YouTube to look at. Certainly was tooth-achy in the car on the long sit, necessitating a "lean left" counteraction. Will get consistent w/ a piriformis stretch. Haven't investigated ilio-psoas as possible source or directed exercise yet.

Finally have a Windows XP for the Mac - had a (mistaken) upgrade, of no use w/o already having the XP.

C • balls 3

Walk - jog DP, psychologically feels much better than just a slow walk.
Typed above words & then had to take two ticks to toilet.

Fun & games with boat - filled the tanks but water trickled into the bilge, didn't give up implying a leak in one of the tanks under the cabin sole. Not a new experience but why should anything go smoothly - that would absolutely be too easy!

DP to slough & back, June is busting out all over and indeed looks good. No tracks to speak of.

Bright, breezy. Walked a loop on SPS property. Tried some jogging but it
really was not feasible. Buttercups galore in the fields!

"TGIF! time to read good books or get some sleep or whatever" says Pooka, c. 1995

Late DP, got involved in tall grass and ticks!

Stretching & weights. Sat on a cold gel pack on the way back in the car - good use of it...way cold.

Got OCAD 10 activated finally. Was provided a web url but Firefox search turned up nothing. Eventually tried Windows Explorer which succeeded for reasons unclear (had typed it correctly). Pretty fancy program, even a light user like myself can see that. Using such adds a dimension to orienteering. Should use OCAD with some regularity but don't.

Cool, windy day. Did some boat work with Beth & part of the cover blew off (in a few seconds - and 15' to get it back acceptably well). O time morphs to boat prep time thru 6/15 or so. In the past, frantic has been a word to describe such activity. I hope I can outsmart it - it's overdue.

DP late - a windy, turbulent sky...a scenario out of "Wuthering Heights" per Beth. It recalled the coyotes' call of the wild last night and a whippoorill's incessant call, not a common night sound here from my limited observation.

And to the point, it shortened Z&M's long faces right round to a curve.

SPS XC, went with idea of jogging but didn't feel right so walked. Entirely in shade, green forest, June 1st....

After work, bought 2 4" ace wraps, a cold gel compress and a good-enough wet-dry heating pad, saving lots of money:-)!

C • And...... 9

DP, dark sky but not all that impressive despite severe thunderstorm watch w/ slight possibility of tornado. A jungle on the PL! Encountered a snapper, about 8", full of hiss & vinegar.